Quotes About Cognition

Gopnik compares baby consciousness to that of an adult dumped into the middle of a foreign city, totally overwhelmed, constantly turning to see new things, struggling to make sense of it all. Things are even worse for a baby, actually, because even the most stressed-out adult can choose to think of something else: we can look forward to getting back to the hotel; imagine how we would describe our trip to friends; fantasize, daydream, or pray. The baby just is, trapped in the here and now.

Paul Rozin's discoveries that people often refuse to drink soup from a brand-new bedpan, eat fudge shaped like feces, or put an empty gun to their head and pull the trigger. As Tamar Gendler points out, the mind works on two tracks. We know, consciously, that the bedpan is clean, the fudge is fudge, the gun is empty, and yet we can't help blurring the imagined and reality; our minds scream, "Dangerous object! Stay away!

I believe this in part because of Paul Rozin's discoveries that people often refuse to drink soup from a brand-new bedpan, eat fudge shaped like feces, or put an empty gun to their head and pull the trigger. As Tamar Gendler points out, the mind works on two tracks. We know, consciously, that the bedpan is clean, the fudge is fudge, the gun is empty, and yet we can't help blurring the imagined and reality; our minds scream, "Dangerous object! Stay away!

Based on the ideas of the linguists Edward Sapir and Benjamin Lee Whorf, this is the view that language doesn't just change minds by transferring thoughts from one head to another; it configures how people make sense of the world, including about space, time, and causality.

Regardless of their sex, good-looking faces light up the brain

But, again, since there aren't muscles in the brain, why do we get mentally tired? Perhaps, like muscles, brains feed off a limited resource. Baumeister and his colleagues suggest that this is glucose (sugar). This theory is supported by the fact that sugar does seem to have an energizing effect. Running out of steam? Have a candy bar.

what really drops glucose is exercise—but, contrary to the predictions of the glucose hypothesis, exercise tends to make you better at subsequent tasks requiring mental effort, not worse.

From a neuroscience perspective we are all divided and discontinuous. The mental processes underlying our sense of self-- feelings, thoughts, memories-- are scattered through different zones of the brain. There is no special point of convergence. No cockpit of the soul. No soul-pilot. They come together in a work of fiction. A human being is a story-telling machine. The self is a story.

This is the left hemisphere confabulating. It does this for all of us, every waking moment. It edits our conscious experiences, makes them comprehensible and palatable. It's the brain's spin-doctor.

It is well established that you will feel uncomfortable when there is a discrepancy between what you think and what you do. This is known as cognitive dissonance.

Perception begins with what is experienced, rather than beginning with what is expected; the model is to "see and understand" rather than "understand and see.

While any software system introduces some kind of formalization of the world, HCI (like AI) deals with formalizations of human cognition and activity. These are the issues that have lay at the heart of philosophical debate for centuries. In some ways, it would be hard to imagine a more philosophical enterprise.

Emotions change how we see the world and how we interpret the actions of others. We do not seek to challenge why we are feeling a particular emotion; instead, we seek to confirm it.

Misinterpreting is not the only route by which someone may believe his or her false account is true.

St. Thomas Aquinas said it neatly and powerfully centuries ago: "Things known are in the knower according to the mode of the knower.

The only reason some people get lost in thought is because it's unfamiliar territory.

NICE (2003) has recommended the Mini Mental State Examination,

Research by Stanford neuroscientist Andrew Huberman upends the idea that beliefs determine what we do or what we can do. It is the opposite. Beliefs do not change our actions. Actions change our beliefs.

After all, ... your eyes only see what your mind lets you believe.

I stored the information for later use. My mind is a warehouse of information like that, bushels of scrap paper filled with notes.

You already speak German; you just don't know it yet.

It is a basic psychological teaching that if we want to change the way we feel, we must first change the way we act.

There are two types of people in life - those who get it and those who don't.

When their feelings don't fit the facts, they may unconsciously revise the facts to fit their feelings. This may be one reason why their perception of events is different from yours.